IESE is opening a fifth section of its full-time MBA for this academic year, raising its MBA student intake to 355 students, compared to 292 last year.

Challenging the idea that the traditional two-year MBA program is in decline due to competition from different programs and providers, the decision came about due to the school seeing growing demand from quality applicants for its flagship full-time MBA program.

This increase in quality applications in recent years has allowed IESE to expand its MBA intake for this year’s entering class without sacrificing on quality. In fact, the average GMAT score has actually risen slightly compared to last year - from 680 to 690.

64 different nationalities are represented in IESE´s new class, a record for the school in terms of diversity of students´ country of origin. Outside of Spain, the countries with the most representatives are the USA (36), Brazil (22) China (20) India (20) Japan (16) Mexico (15) and Peru (15). Interestingly, there has been a significant increase (66 percent) in the number of students coming from mainland China compared to last year.

The news is a testament to the concentrated effort carried out from IESE´s Admissions team at strategic locations around the world – both at the school's international campuses (Barcelona, Madrid, Munich, New York and Sao Paulo) and in other locations such as Singapore, Tokyo, Hong Kong and Shanghai.